US judge finds Musk’s USAID cuts likely unconstitutional, DOGE blocked from more cuts

Musk and DOGE have been stopped from taking any more steps to shut down USAID. Why? They probably broke the U.S. Constitution by trying to shut down the agency – 120 hours per week gone to waste.

In a preliminary ruling, U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang in Maryland told Musk to give access to USAID’s computer systems for its direct and contract employees. This includes thousands who were placed on leave. 

NEWS

A federal judge finds that Elon Musk and DOGE’s actions to shut down USAID likely violated the Constitution “in multiple ways,” including the Appointments Clause.

The judge partially grants an injunction.

Ruling https://t.co/B1C3h9KDGS pic.twitter.com/udMP0n9tQM

— Adam Klasfeld (@KlasfeldReports) March 18, 2025

The decision came after a lawsuit from current and former USAID workers. This is one of many lawsuits still being heard about how quickly Washington’s main humanitarian aid agency was shut down. 

Norm Eisen, executive chair of State Democracy Defenders Fund and a lawyer representing the 26 anonymous plaintiffs in the case, said, “Today’s decision is an important victory against Elon Musk and his DOGE attack on USAID, the U.S. government, and the Constitution.” The attempt to close USAID literally sparked a global cry, which is quite a relief to most people.

What is the lawsuit about?

In their lawsuit from February 13, the plaintiffs said that Musk took over USAID and behaved as an officer of the US, They claimed that it is against the Constitution because such officers must be appointed by the president and approved by the Senate.

In addition, they said that Musk and DOGE had gone beyond what the executive branch could do by destroying an office that Congress had set up.

Chuang, who was chosen by Barack Obama, agreed that Musk and DOGE likely violated the US Constitution in multiple ways. He said that these acts hurt both the plaintiffs and the public interest. 

On the other hand, according to the court filings, Musk and DOGE said that Musk’s only job is to advise Trump and that agency officials, not DOGE, were to blame for the actions that the plaintiffs were challenging. Chuang discovered that Musk and DOGE had really taken direct control of the agency.

Chuang did not stop the mass firing of most of USAID’s staff and contracts, which has stopped many of the agency’s operations around the world and made it impossible to help people in need. He said it was likely that those firings broke the Constitution but that they were okay with government officials who aren’t named in the case. 

In a different case brought by USAID contractors, U.S. District Judge Amir Ali in Washington last week told the government to quickly unfreeze payments to contractors for work done in the past, but he did not tell it to reinstate the contracts.

The government missed the March 10 date to pay the full amount of Ali’s first set of payments, which totaled about $671 million. It has said that each payment needs to be looked at carefully. Ali told the government on Monday to give him a plan for when it would make these and all the other past-due payments, which totaled about $2 billion.

Trump promises to appeal

Trump, Musk, and DOGE have worked tirelessly to bring down USAID. In fact, on his first day back in office, Trump froze all U.S. aid to other countries for 90 days and asked that aid programs be checked to see if they were in line with his administration’s policy.

Right after that, Musk and DOGE accessed USAID’s email and payment systems, stopped many of its payments, and told many of its staff they were being put on leave. Musk even said that he had “spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper.”

Last week, Marco Rubio, who is Secretary of State, said that the government was ending more than 80% of USAID’s projects and firing most of its staff.

With all these efforts taken into consideration, of course Trump is planning to appeal. He has been doing that for all the rehiring of other departments. He told Fox News his administration would appeal the ruling. He said, “I guarantee you we will be appealing it. We have rogue judges that are destroying our country.” 

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